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Advertising feature: Developing diversity

By Angela Spivey

When Erica Childs was an undergraduate math major at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, she wasn’t sure she wanted to go into research. But mentors at the university’s Meyerhoff Scholarship Program, as well as an internship at the National Institutes of Health, helped Childs, who is African-American, picture herself in science. Now she’s a UCLA doctoral student, aiming to become a statistician who develops methodology for genetic studies.

The Meyerhoff program, which aims to increase diversity in science, engineering and related fields, assigns to minority students mentors of all kinds, from older students to career researchers. “They support you and push you to get internships in the summer and to apply to graduate school right after you finish college,” says Childs.

Helping hands

According to a 2007 National Science Foundation (NSF) report, in 2005 the total number of African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans and American Indians who earned doctorates from US universities was just 1,571 – about 9.8 per cent of all science and engineering doctorates awarded. This is a small improvement on previous years – the figure in 2003 was nine per cent – but there is still room to grow.

Many schools and other research institutions have found that mentoring is a particularly effective way of recruiting and retaining minorities. The Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP), an NSF program working for greater diversity in science, is one such group. Since 2002, its 57 member universities have increased the number of science, technology and engineering PhDs awarded to African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans and Native Americans by a total of 87, or 14.5 per cent. The growth was mostly in the biological/ agricultural sciences and engineering.

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The nine campuses in the University of California (UC) system account for almost 40 per cent of the increases. Yolanda George, deputy director of the Education and Human Resources Program at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, believes this is because the UC system does especially well at drawing on California’s Latino population.

Other schools that have increased enrollment and degrees awarded to minorities include Georgia Tech, the University of Michigan and MIT. “If you look at the number of underrepresented minorities these schools are enrolling and the PhDs they are producing, the numbers sound low; 18 or 20 per year, for instance,” says George. “But they are actually quite high. Other institutions may only produce two to three [minority] PhDs a year.”

Many schools encourage personal mentoring. “You can’t just send out an email saying that there’s a training program available,” says Janet Sinsheimer, a professor at UCLA and co-director of a DNA analysis training program funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). When Erica Childs first visited UCLA, Sinsheimer talked to her about applying for the training program and eventually became her research advisor.

When the program started six years ago, it had no minority students. Now, they comprise four of the nine trainees. “We got more attuned to the problem,” Sinsheimer says. This is largely because of NHGRI’s 2001 Minority Action Plan, which encourages all grant recipients to include people from diverse backgrounds.

NHGRI also encourages diversity at the NIH campus through such schemes as a summer internship program for undergraduates, an undergraduate scholarship program for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, and postdoctoral research and training opportunities.

So where do those newly minted PhDs go after graduation? According to the NSF, out of African-Americans with doctoral degrees who were employed in 2003, 62 per cent worked in academia. For Hispanics, that proportion was 59 per cent and for Native American doctorate holders it was 48.6 per cent.

Still much to do

Outside academia, the proportions of minorities in science and engineering occupations are not faring as well. According to Science and Engineering Indicators 2008, at the doctoral level African-Americans, Hispanics and American Indians/Alaska Natives together held six per cent of non-academic science and engineering jobs in 2005, a mere two per cent rise from 1990.

One way that academic institutions and companies are now tackling this problem is to engage potential recruits early. Because many students get turned off from science and math before they ever reach college, programs targeted at undergraduates and even high school students are vital.

Novartis, for instance, offers weekly tutoring for grade-school students at its New Jersey headquarters, as well as a program in which employees mentor high school students for a week. “We look for every opportunity to encourage students to continue their education and we also give them exposure to the corporate environment at a young age,” says Marilyn Priestley, vice president of Diversity and Inclusion.

At the University of Michigan, all undergraduate students can get intensive mentoring and advising to get up to speed for college through its Comprehensive Studies Program. “We want to make sure students from a wide variety of backgrounds are successful,” says Robert Megginson, professor of Mathematics and associate dean for Undergraduate and Graduate Education in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts.

Neither Michigan nor California is allowed to consider race or ethnic background in admissions after both states banned affirmative action. The University of Michigan therefore recruits heavily in diverse areas, such as Detroit, and considers ‘life diversity’ as seen in application essays. For instance, a candidate may have overcome difficult family circumstances or lived in another country. “We read every essay carefully to get a feeling for the total package,” Megginson says.

Megginson, who is Native American, says that to prevent eroding of progress, mentoring can never stop. “I’m 68 years old and there are people at this university whom I still consider to be my mentors,” he says.

What about women?

In 1995, when Nancy Hopkins, professor of biology, chaired a committee that documented inequalities for women at MIT, it was unheard of to talk about things like finding good childcare. “At no time would anybody ever discuss the issue of a woman scientist having children,” Hopkins says. “You just wouldn’t have brought the topic up in the workplace.”

Now it’s a given at many universities to consider such issues. “Just a few weeks ago we sat down [at MIT] to talk about improving daycare. It was just like talking about taking a sabbatical or any other topic,” Hopkins says. “I don’t know why we were so afraid to talk about this 15 years ago, but we were.”

Joan Steitz, professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale University, says that Hopkins’ report brought national press attention to the issue. “These things do make a difference because they bring issues to people’s consciousness,” she says.

Before such efforts, it might have been a big deal for a woman to report a salary inequity. But now most universities have committees or other mechanisms for reviewing such questions. “It lets women know there is a system in place for reviewing these things, so it becomes routine,” Hopkins says. “Before, women were so isolated.”

In the early 1960s, when Steitz was first pursuing science, she had few women role models, but she worked with male scientists who encouraged her. “As things have improved, more and more women see that it’s possible to do whatever they want in science, and that’s a vast improvement,” she says.